Type of Work

Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark is a tragedy. A tragedy is a
dignified work in which the main character undergoes
a struggle and suffers a downfall. In Shakespeare's
plays, the main character of a tragedy is usually a
person of noble heritage. A flaw in his personality,
sometimes abetted by fate, brings about his
downfall. Hamlet,
Prince of Denmark is also sometimes
characterized as a revenge play in the tradition of
the Roman playwright Seneca (4 BC-AD 65). Seneca, a
tutor to Emperor Nero (AD 37-68), wrote plays that
described in detail the grisly horror of murder and
revenge. After Elizabethans began translating
Seneca's works in 1559, writers read and relished
them, then wrote plays imitating them. Shakespeare
appears to have seasoned Hamlet and an earlier play, Titus Andronicus,
with some of Seneca's ghoulish condiments.

Composition
and Publication Dates

Shakespeare wrote
Hamlet between 1599 and1601. The first
performance was probably in 1602. It first appeared
in print in 1603 in a pirated, unreliable version,
published by Nicholas Ling and John Trundell. What
happened was that the publishers or a person acting
on their behalf copied the play hurriedly (perhaps
during a performance). The copyist made many
mistakes and omitted some passages. The play was
republished within the next two years. In 1623,
friends of Shakespeare (deceased by this time)
published an authentic version of Hamlet and
thirty-five other Shakespeare plays. The 1623
version is the one that appears in modern
publications of Hamlet,
with minor editorial changes in some editions. No
reliable record exists of the date and place of the
first performance of the play. There is a good
chance that it debuted at London's Globe Theatre,
completed in 1599. Shakespeare was a part-owner of
the Globe.

Probable
Main Sources

An important information source for Shakespeare was
the third and fourth books of Gesta Danorum (The Deeds of the Danes),
a Latin work by Saxo Grammaticus (1150?-1220?).
Christiern Pedersen (1480-1554), a Danish humanist
writer and printer, published the first edition of Gesta Danorum
in Paris in 1514 with a different title: Historia Danica.
Grammaticus wrote the book at the request of a
priest named Absalon, who was the archbishop of Lund
from 1177 or 1178 to 1201. Lund was then under the
control of Denmark but is now part of Sweden. Gesta Danorum
recounts the stories of sixty kings of Danish lands
in Books 1 to 9 of the sixteen-volume work. Book 3
tells the tale of Amleth (the model for Hamlet) as
he avenges the murder of his father, Horwendil, at
the hands of Feng.

In Grammaticus's tale, Amleth lives on and becomes
King of Jutland. (It is possible that Grammaticus
based his tale on an Icelandic saga called Amlói.) The
Amleth tale was retold in Histoires Tragiques (Tragic Stories),
by François de Belleforest.

Shakespeare may also have drawn upon a lost play by
Thomas Kyd (1558-1594), a play referred to as Ur-Hamlet (the
prefix ur-
means original), and a surviving Kyd play, The Spanish Tragedy (also
spelled The
Spanish Tragedie), in which the
presentation of the character Hieronimo could have
inspired Shakespeare's probing analysis of Hamlet.
Regarding Ur-Hamlet,
Shakespeare critic and scholar Peter
Alexander—editor of a popular edition of the
complete works of Shakespeare, first published in
1951—maintains that Ur-Hamlet was actually written by
Shakespeare between 1587 and 1589 as a draft of the
final version of the play. Shakespeare critic Harold
Bloom supports this contention in a 2003 book
entitled Hamlet:
Poem Unlimited (Riverhead Books, New York,
page 124). Possible additional sources for Hamlet, Prince of
Denmark are a tenth-century Celtic tale
about a warrior named Amhlaide and an
eleventh-century Persian tale from The Book of Kings
(Shah-nameh),
by Abu Ol-qasem Mansur.

Settings

The main setting is Elsinore Castle in eastern
Denmark, which in real life is Kronborg Castle. It
is on the Øresund strait separating the Danish
island of Sjaelland (Zealand) from the Swedish
province of Skåne and linking the Baltic Sea in the
south to the Kattegat Strait in the north. Elsinore
is a real town. Its Danish name is Helsingør. In
Shakespeare's time, Elsinore was an extremely
important port that fattened its coffers by charging
a toll for ship passage through the Øresund strait.

Modern Elsinore, or Helsingør, is directly west of a
Swedish city with a similar name, Helsingborg (or
Hälsingborg). Within the city limits of Elsinore is
Kronborg Castle, said to be the model for the
Elsinore Castle of Shakespeare's play. Construction
on the castle began in 1574, when Shakespeare was
ten, and ended in 1585, when Shakespeare was
twenty-one. It is believed that actors known to
Shakespeare performed at Kronborg Castle. Other
settings in Hamlet
are a plain in Denmark, near Elsinore, and a
churchyard near Elsinore. Offstage action in the
play (referred to in dialogue) takes place on a ship
bound for England from Denmark on which Hamlet
replaces instructions to execute him (see the plot summary below) with
instructions to execute his traitorous companions,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

Tone

The tone of the play is somber and foreboding. The
tone becomes clear at the outset of the play in the
exchange between Bernardo and Francisco as they
stand watch on the castle:

BERNARDO:
’Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed,
Francisco.
FRANCISCO: For this relief much thanks; ’tis
bitter cold,
And I am sick at heart. (1.1.9-11)

Note that it is midnight, that it is bitter cold,
and that Francisco is "sick at heart." Moments
later, when Horatio enters, Marcellus tells him of a
"dreaded sight" that he and Bernardo saw on two
nights while standing watch. Horatio is skeptical.
But when Bernardo begins to report what they saw,
using unsettling nature imagery, Marcellus
interrupts him when the sight appears again:

BERNARDO: Last
night of all,
When yond same star that’s westward from the pole
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus and myself,
The bell then beating one,—
MARCELLUS: Peace! break thee off; look,
where it comes again! (1.1.47-52)

Having established a dark, ominous tone or mood,
Shakespeare then proceeds to unfold his tale.
Revenge and death are in the air.

Characters

Hamlet: Son
of a murdered Danish king (who was also named
Hamlet) and nephew and stepson of the present king,
Claudius. Hamlet suffers great mental anguish over
the death of his father, the marriage of his mother
to the suspected murderer (Claudius, the brother of
the dead king), and the clash between his moral
sense and his desire for revenge against his
father's murderer. To ensnare the killer, Hamlet
pretends madness. Some Shakespeare interpreters
contend that he really does suffer a mental
breakdown. Hamlet is highly intelligent and well
liked by the citizens, although at times he can be
petty and cruel. Hamlet is the protagonist, or main
character. The play centers on him and his effort to
avenge the murder of his father. Claudius:
The new king of Denmark, Hamlet's uncle and
stepfather. He becomes king after Hamlet's father,
the previous king, is found dead in his orchard.
Hamlet suspects that Claudius murdered him.Gertrude:
Hamlet's mother and widow of the murdered king. She
continues as queen of Denmark after she marries
Claudius. That the marriage took place within two
months after the late king's funeral deeply disturbs
Hamlet. Ghost of Hamlet's
Father: An apparition of old King
Hamlet. Polonius:
Bootlicking lord chamberlain of King Claudius. A
lord chamberlain managed a royal household. Ophelia:
Daughter of Polonius. She loves Hamlet, but his
pretended madness—during which he rejects her—and
the death of her father trigger a pathological
reaction in her.Horatio:
Hamlet's best friend. Horatio never wavers in his
loyalty to Hamlet. At the end of the play, he
recites immortal lines: "Good night, sweet prince,
/ And flights of angels sing thee to thy
rest!" (5.2.304-305). Laertes:
Son of Polonius and brother of Ophelia.
Circumstances make him an enemy of Hamlet, and they
duel to the death in a fencing match near the end
the play. As a man who reacts to circumstances
quickly, with a minimum of reflection on the meaning
and possible outcome of his actions, Laertes
contrasts sharply with the pensive and indecisive
Hamlet and, thus, serves as his foil. Rosencrantz,
Guildenstern: Courtiers and friends of
Hamlet who attended school with him. They turn
against him to act as spies for Claudius and agents
in Claudius's scheme to have Hamlet murdered in
England. Hamlet quickly smells out their deception
and treachery. Marcellus,
Bernardo: Officers who are the first to see
the ghost of Hamlet's father. Francisco:
Another officer. Voltimand,
Cornelius, Osric: Courtiers
who bear messages for the king. Osric informs Hamlet
of the fencing match arranged for him and Laertes. A
courtier is an attendant at the court of a monarch. Reynaldo:
Servant of Polonius. Fortinbras:
Prince of Norway, who is on the march with an army.
In battlefield combat (referred to in the play but
not taking place during the play), old King Hamlet
slew the father of Fortinbras and annexed Norwegian
territory. Fortinbras seeks revenge. Players:
Actors who arrive at Elsinore to offer an
entertainment. Hamlet directs one of them, referred
to as the First Player, to stage a drama called The Mouse-trap,
about a throne-seeker who murders a king. Hamlet
hopes the play will cause Claudius to react in a way
that reveals his guilt as the murderer of old King
Hamlet. As The
Mouse-trap unfolds on a stage at Elsinore,
the actors are referred to as the following:

Prologue:
Actor presenting a one-sentence prologue to the
play.Player
King: Actor portraying a king (whom
Hamlet refers to as Gonzago, the Duke of Vienna).Player
Queen: Actor portraying the queen (whom
Hamlet refers to as Baptista, the Duchess of
Vienna).Lucianus:
Actor portraying the king's nephew and his
murderer.

Clowns
(Gravediggers): Two peasants who dig Ophelia's
grave. The word clown
in Shakespeare's time often referred to a peasant or
rustic.
Yorick: Court jester of old King Hamlet. He
amused and looked after the younger Hamlet when the
latter was a child. Yorick is dead during the play,
But his skull, which one of the gravediggers exhumes
in Act 5, Scene 1, arouses old memories in Hamlet
that provide a glimpse of his childhood. The skull
also feeds Hamlet's morbid preoccupation with death.Claudio: Man
who relays messages for the king and queen from
Hamlet after he escapes from a ship carrying him to
England. Minor Characters:
Ship captain, English ambassadors, lords, ladies,
officers, soldiers, sailors, messengers, attendants.Special Character
Designations

Protagonist:
Hamlet is the protagonist, or main character. The
play centers on him and his effort to avenge the
murder of his father.Antagonists:
Claudius is the flesh-and-blood antagonist (an
opponent of the protagonist). He spends much of
his time plotting against Hamlet. Another
antagonist is an abstract one: Hamlet's
indecisiveness in acting against Claudius.Foil of
Hamlet: Laertes is the main foil of
Hamlet. A foil is a character who contrasts
sharply with another character. Laertes is
decisive and even headstrong whereas Hamlet is
indecisive and procrastinating.

Plot Summary

At midnight behind the battlements at the top of
Elsinore castle in eastern Denmark, an officer named
Bernardo arrives to relieve Francisco, another
officer who has been standing guard in the frigid
air during an uneventful watch. "Not a mouse
stirring" (1.1.13), Francisco reports as he leaves.
Two other men, Horatio and Marcellus, arrive a
moment later. Marcellus inquires, "What, has this
thing appeared again to-night?" (1.1.31). The
"thing" is a ghost that Marcellus says has appeared
twice on the top of the castle to him and Bernardo.
Horatio doubts the story, believing the specter is a
child of their imaginations.

While Bernardo attempts to convince Horatio of the
truth of the tale, the apparition appears again—a
ghost in the form of the recently deceased King
Hamlet, outfitted in the armor he wore when warring
against Norway and slaying its king, Fortinbras.
Horatio questions the phantom. But just as quickly
as it appeared, it disappears. Horatio, grown pale
with fright, says, "This bodes some strange eruption
to our state" (1.1.85). His words foreshadow all the
tragic action to follow. The ghost reappears, then
disappears again.

Prince Hamlet, the son of the late king, learned of
the death of his father while studying at the
University of Wittenberg in Germany. When he returns
to Denmark to attend the funeral, grief smites him
deeply. The king's brother, Claudius, has taken the
throne, even though Hamlet has a claim on it as the
son of the deceased king. In addition, Claudius has
married the late king's widow, Gertrude—Hamlet's
mother—in little more than a month after old Hamlet
died, a development that deeply distresses young
Hamlet. In a soliloquy, Hamlet expresses his
opposition to the marriage, his loathing of
Claudius, and his disappointment in his mother:

A little month, or
ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears:—why she, even she—
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
Would have mourn'd longer—married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
(1.2.151-161)

The words incestuous
sheets in line 161 reflect the belief,
prevalent in Europe at and before Shakespeare's
time, that marriage between in-laws—Claudius had
been Gertrude's brother-in-law before he married
her—was a form of incest.

As a first priority as king, Claudius prepares
to thwart an expected invasion of Norwegian troops
under Prince Fortinbras, the son of a Norwegian king
slain in battle years earlier by old King Hamlet.
Fortinbras apparently has a double goal: to avenge
the death of his father (old King Fortinbras) and to
win back territory the Norwegians lost to the Danes.

In the meantime, Hamlet's best friend, Horatio,
tells the young prince the amazing story of the
ghost. He says two guards, Bernardo and Marcellus,
have reported seeing on two nights an apparition of
old King Hamlet on the top of the royal castle. On
the third night, Horatio says, he accompanied the
guards and himself saw the apparition. ''I will
watch to-night,'' Hamlet says (1.2.260).

Another young man at Elsinore—Laertes, son of the
king's lord chamberlain, Polonius—is preparing to
leave for France to study at the University of
Paris. Before debarking, he gives advice to his
sister, Ophelia, who has received the attentions of
Hamlet from time to time, attentions that Ophelia
apparently welcomes. Laertes advises her that
Hamlet's attentions are a passing fancy; he is
merely dallying with her.

For Hamlet and the
trifling of his favour,
Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood,
A violet in the youth of primy nature,
Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,
The perfume and suppliance of a minute;
No more. (1.3.8-13)

In other words, Laertes says, Ophelia should be wary
of Hamlet's courtesies and flirtations. They are,
Laertes maintains, mere trifles that are sweet but
not lasting. Before he debarks for Paris, Laertes
receives advice from his father, Polonius:

Neither a borrower
nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!
(1.3.82-88)

After Laertes leaves and day yields to night, Hamlet
meets on the castle roof with Horatio, Marcellus,
and Bernardo at his side. By and by, Hamlet sees the
Ghost but is uncertain whether it is the spirit of
his father or the devil in disguise.

Be thou a spirit of
health or a goblin damn'd
Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from
hell,
Be thy interests wicked or charitable,
Thou comest in such a questionable shape
That I will speak to thee. (1.4.46-50)

When Hamlet questions the Ghost, it says, "I am thy
father's spirit, / Doom'd for a certain term to walk
the night" (1.5.16). The Ghost tells him to revenge
a "foul and most unnatural murder" (1.5.31)
committed by Claudius. According to the Ghost's
tale, Claudius poured a vial of poison extracted
from a plant of the nightshade family (henbane, also
called hemblane) into old King Hamlet's ear while
the king was asleep, robbing him, "of life, of
crown, of queen" (1.5.83). Claudius had committed
the murder when King Hamlet had sin on his soul, the
better to send him to the fiery regions of purgatory
(in Roman Catholic theology, a place or state of
being in which a soul purges itself of sin to become
eligible for heaven).

Hamlet makes Horatio, Bernardo, and Marcellus
swear on the hilt of his sword (where the handle and
a protective bar intersect, forming a cross suitable
for oath-taking) never to reveal what they saw.
While attempting to verify the ghost's story, Hamlet
tells the others he will pretend to be mad, putting
on an "antic [clownish; odd; mentally unstable]
disposition" (1.5.194).

It is Ophelia, Hamlet's beloved, who first reports
that he has been acting strangely. She tells her
father, Polonius, the nosy lord chamberlain, that
Hamlet had burst in upon her while she was sewing.
His face white, his eyes crazed, he took her by the
wrist, peered into her eyes, then left the room.
Polonius runs to King Claudius and repeats Ophelia's
report. Claudius suspects there is something sane
and threatening behind Hamlet's strange behavior. So
he directs two school acquaintances of Hamlet,
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to watch the prince to
find out the truth.

When traveling actors come to Elsinore to entertain,
Hamlet engages them to stage a play, which he calls
The Mouse-trap.
In the play, a throne-seeker uses poison to murder a
ruler named Gonzago. Claudius's reaction to the play
will reveal his guilt, Hamlet believes, "For murder,
though it have no tongue, will speak / With most
miraculous organ" (2.2.427-428). Such a revelation
would confirm that the ghost was indeed telling the
truth.

Meanwhile, Fortinbras sends word that he will not
make war on Denmark if King Claudius allows him to
march through the country to invade Poland. Claudius
agrees.

After Rosencrantz and Guildenstern fail to fathom
the meaning of Hamlet's "madness," Claudius and
Polonius secretly observe Hamlet conversing with
Ophelia. During the conversation, Hamlet rejects and
insults Ophelia as his apparent madness worsens. His
words deeply wound her, and there is a question
whether he is transferring to poor, frail Ophelia
the loathing and anger he feels toward his mother
for her marriage to Claudius. Claudius, unsure
whether Hamlet pretends insanity to disguise a
scheme or is really mad, decides to rid the court of
his unsettling presence by sending him to England on
a contrived political mission. There, while
conducting the court's business, he will be
murdered.

While the actors present the play, they stage a
murder in which an actor pours ''poison'' into the
ear of another actor playing the ruler, Gonzago. The
scene so unnerves King Claudius that he rises and
ends the play abruptly. His reaction convinces
Hamlet of Claudius's guilt. Claudius murdered
Hamlet's father; there can be no doubt of it.

Queen Gertrude reproves Hamlet for upsetting
Claudius by staging the play. Hamlet in turn rebukes
her for her hasty marriage. Polonius, meanwhile, has
positioned himself out of sight behind a wall
tapestry (called an arras) to eavesdrop. When Hamlet
sees the tapestry move, he stabs through it and
kills Polonius, thinking he is Claudius. After
Hamlet discovers his fatal mistake, the ghost
reappears to remind Hamlet of his duty. When Hamlet
speaks with the apparition, Gertrude cannot see the
ghost and concludes that her son is indeed insane.
Later she tells Claudius that Hamlet, in a fit of
madness, killed Polonius.

Claudius sends Hamlet to England with Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern, who carry sealed papers ordering
Hamlet's execution after the ship's arrival. At sea,
Hamlet discovers the papers in a sealed packet while
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are asleep and writes a
new commission ordering the deaths of Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern, then re-seals the papers and
places them in the packet. The next day, pirates
attack the ship. Hamlet escapes and hitches a ride
with them back to Denmark. When Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern arrive in England and present the
sealed papers, they are executed.

Meantime, Ophelia, distraught over her father's
death and the apparent loss of Hamlet's love, drowns
in a brook—at first floating until her clothing,
heavy with water, pulls her down. She had climbed a
tree and crawled out on a limb. The limb broke, and
she fell into the water. The consensus at Elsinore
is that she committed suicide.

Upon his return to Denmark, Hamlet encounters
Horatio and they pass through a cemetery where two
men are digging a grave. The first gravedigger sings
as he digs and throws out a skull. Shocked, Hamlet
tells Horatio, "That skull had a tongue in it, and
could sing once; how the knave jowls it to the
ground, as if it were Cain's jaw-bone, that did the
first murder!" (5.1.34). The man continues to dig
and throws out another skull. Hamlet says, "May not
that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his
quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his
tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this
rude knave now to knock him about . . . ?" (5.1.40).
After Hamlet strikes up a conversation with the
gravedigger, the latter tells him that the second
skull was that of Yorick, old King Hamlet's jester
when Hamlet was a child. Holding the skull, Hamlet
recites a short speech about Yorick that underscores
Hamlet's preoccupation with death.

A funeral procession approaches. Hamlet is unaware
that the body being borne aloft is Ophelia's. It is
she who will be lowered into the grave. When Hamlet
sees her face, and when Laertes sees the face of
Hamlet, the two men grapple, tumbling into the
grave. Laertes means to avenge the deaths of his
father, Polonius, and his sister, Ophelia.
Attendants part them, and Hamlet declares,

I loved Ophelia:
forty thousand brothers
Could not, with all their quantity of love,
Make up my sum. (5.1.155-157)

Later, in secret, Laertes and Claudius plot against
Hamlet and poison the tip of a sword Laertes is to
use against Hamlet in a fencing match designed as an
entertainment. For good measure, Claudius prepares
poisoned wine he will offer Hamlet during the match.
Osric, a courtier and messenger of the king, informs
Hamlet of the details of the match. Hamlet is
unaware of the deadly plot against him.

During the competition, Hamlet performs brilliantly,
and Claudius offers him the cup of wine. But Hamlet
and Laertes fight on. Meanwhile, Gertrude takes the
cup, telling Hamlet, "The queen carouses to thy
fortune" (5.1.224) and, before the king can stop
her, she drinks the wine. Laertes grazes Hamlet with
the poisoned rapier, breaking his skin and
envenoming his bloodstream. Swords wave and poke
wildly, and the fencers drop their weapons and
accidentally exchange them. Hamlet then wounds
Laertes with the same poisoned rapier. Both men are
bleeding. A short while later, the queen keels over.
To divert attention from the drink and himself,
Claudius says Gertrude has fainted from the sight of
blood. But Gertrude, drawing her last breath before
dying, says, "The drink, the drink; I am poison'd."
Everyone now knows that Claudius had offered Hamlet
poisoned wine.

Before Laertes dies, he reconciles with Hamlet and
implicates Claudius in the scheme to undo Hamlet.
Hamlet then runs Claudius through, killing him. As
Hamlet lies mortally wounded from the poison on the
tip of Laertes sword, Prince Fortinbras arrives at
Elsinore with his army after his conquest of Poland.
Hamlet tells Horatio that he wishes the crown of
Denmark to pass to Fortinbras. Then Hamlet dies.
Ambassadors from England arrive to report the deaths
of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Horatio
announces that he will inform the world of the
events leading up to the deaths of Hamlet and the
others. While soldiers bear off the bodies in a
solemn procession, canons fire a salute.

Conflicts

Conflicts drive the action in the play. The main
external conflict is between Hamlet and the killer
of his father, Claudius. While Hamlet is attempting
to confirm Claudius's guilt, Claudius is plotting
and executing a plan to murder Hamlet. Hamlet is
also in conflict with (1) his mother, whom he
believes betrayed the memory of his father by
marrying so soon after King Hamlet's death; (2)
Ophelia, whom Hamlet treats with perplexing and
sometimes insulting behavior; and (3) Laertes, whom
Hamlet outraged by killing his father. Laertes also
believes that Hamlet indirectly caused Ophelia's
death. Finally, Hamlet is in conflict with himself.

Climax and
Denouement

The climax of a play or another literary work, such
as a short story or a novel, can be defined as (1)
the turning point at which the conflict begins to
resolve itself for better or worse, or as (2) the
final and most exciting event in a series of events.
The climax in Hamlet
occurs, according to the first definition, when
Hamlet satisfies himself that Claudius is indeed the
murderer of his father—thanks to Claudius's guilty
response to the players' enactment of The Mouse-trap
(The Murder of
Gonzago). According to the second
definition, the climax occurs in the final act
during and just after the sword fight.

The denouement is the conclusion that follows the
climax of a play. The conclusion in Hamlet takes
place when Prince Fortinbras arrives at Elsinore
with his army after his conquest of Poland. Hamlet
tells Horatio that he wishes the crown of Denmark to
pass to Fortinbras. Then Hamlet dies. Ambassadors
from England arrive to report the deaths of
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Horatio announces
that he will inform the world of the events leading
up to the deaths of Hamlet and the others. While
soldiers bear off the bodies in a solemn procession,
canons fire a salute.

Themes

Hesitation

Hamlet has an obligation to avenge his father’s
murder, according to the customs of his time. But he
also has an obligation to abide by the moral law,
which dictates, “Thou shalt not kill.” Consequently,
Hamlet has great difficulty deciding what to do and
thus hesitates to take decisive action. While
struggling with his conscience, Hamlet time and
again postpones carrying out the ghost's decree. In
the meantime, he becomes cynical, pessimistic,
depressed. He tells Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,

I
have of late,—but wherefore I know not,—lost all
my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and
indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that
this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a
sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy,
the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging
firmament, this majestical roof fretted with
golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me
but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! How noble in
reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in
moving, how express and admirable! in action how
like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the
beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And
yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man
delights not me; no, nor woman neither. . . .
(2.2.250)

In his famous critiques of Shakespeare’s works,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) has written:

He
[Hamlet] is all dispatch and resolution as far as
words and present intentions are concerned, but
all hesitation and irresolution when called upon
to carry his words and intentions into effect; so
that, resolving to do everything, he does nothing.
He is full of purpose but void of that quality of
mind which accomplishes purpose. . . . Shakespeare
wished to impress upon us the truth that action is
the chief end of existence—that no faculties of
intellect, however brilliant, can be considered
valuable, or indeed otherwise than as misfortunes,
if they withdraw us from or rend us repugnant to
action, and lead us to think and think of doing
until the time has elapsed when we can do anything
effectually. (Lectures
and Notes on Shakspere [Shakespeare] and Other
English Poets. (London: George Bell and
Sons, 1904, page 164)

Inherited Sin and Corruption

Humans are fallen creatures, victims of the devil’s
trickery as described in Genesis, the first book of
the Bible. Allusions or direct references to Adam,
the Garden of Eden, and original sin occur
throughout the play. In the first act, Shakespeare
discloses that King Hamlet died in an orchard
(Garden of Eden) from the bite of a serpent
(Claudius). Later, Hamlet alludes to the burdens
imposed by original sin when he says, in his famous
“To be, or not to be” soliloquy, that the “flesh is
heir to” tribulation in the form of “heart-ache” and
a “thousand natural shocks” (3.1.72-73). In the
third scene of the same act, Claudius compares
himself with the biblical Cain. In Genesis, Cain,
the first son of Adam and Eve, kills his brother,
Abel, the second son, after God accepts Abel’s
sacrifice but not Cain’s. Like Cain, Claudius kills
his brother (old King Hamlet). Claudius recognizes
his Cain-like crime when he says:

O, my offence is
rank, it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon ’t,
A brother’s murder. (3.3.42-44)

In Act 5, the second gravedigger tells the
first gravedigger that Ophelia, who apparently
committed suicide, would not receive a Christian
burial if she were a commoner instead of a noble. In
his reply, the first gravedigger refers directly to
Adam: "Why, there thou sayest: and the more pity
that great folk should have countenance in this
world to drown or hang themselves more than their
even Christian. Come, my spade. There is no ancient
gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers:
they hold up Adam’s profession" (5.1.13). After the
gravedigger tosses Yorick’s skull to Hamlet, the
prince observes: “That skull had a tongue in it, and
could sing once: how the knave jowls it to the
ground, as if it were Cain’s jaw-bone, that did the
first murder!” (5.1.34). All of these references to
Genesis seem to suggest that Hamlet is a kind of
Everyman who inherits “the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune”—that is, the effects of original
sin.

Sons Seeking Revenge

Young Fortinbras seeks revenge against Elsinore
because King Hamlet had killed the father of
Fortinbras, King Fortinbras. Hamlet seeks to avenge
the murder of his father, King Hamlet, by Claudius,
the king’s brother and Hamlet’s uncle. Laertes seeks
revenge against Hamlet for killing his father,
Polonius, the lord chamberlain.

Deception

Deception is a major motif in Hamlet. On the
one hand, Claudius pretends to be cordial and loving
toward Hamlet to conceal his murder of Hamlet’s
father. On the other, Hamlet conceals his knowledge
of the murder. He also wonders whether the Ghost is
deceiving him, pretending to be old King Hamlet when
he is really a devil. Polonius secretly tattles on
Hamlet to Claudius. Hamlet feigns madness.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern pretend to have
Hamlet’s best interests at heart while attempting to
carry out Claudius’s scheme to kill Hamlet. After
that scheme fails, Claudius and Laertes connive to
kill Hamlet during the fencing match. However, that
scheme also goes awry when Gertrude drinks from a
poisoned cup secretly prepared for Hamlet.

Ambition

Claudius so covets the throne that he murders his
own brother, King Hamlet, to win it. In this respect
he is like Macbeth and Richard III in other
Shakespeare plays, who also murder their way to the
throne. Whether Claudius’s ambition to be king was
stronger than his desire to marry Gertrude is
arguable. But both were factors, as he admits to
himself in when he reflects on his guilt: “I am
still possessed / Of those effects for which I did
the murder, / My crown, mine own ambition and my
queen. . .” (3.3.60-61).

Loyalty

Hamlet is loyal to his father’s memory, as is
Laertes to the memory of his father, Polonius, and
his sister, Ophelia. Gertrude is torn between
loyalty to Claudius and Hamlet. Horatio remains
loyal to Hamlet to the end. Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern, school pals of Hamlet, betray Hamlet
and spy on him.

Mischance and Serendipity

Hamlet “just happens” to kill Polonius. Pirates
“just happen” to rescue Hamlet. Hamlet “just
happens” to come across Ophelia’s funeral upon his
return to Denmark. Hamlet and Laertes “just happen”
to exchange swords—one of them with a poisoned
tip—in their duel. Gertrude “just happens” to drink
from a poisoned cup meant for Hamlet. Fate, or
unabashed plot contrivance, works its wonders in
this Shakespeare play.

Christ-like Hamlet

Hamlet is like Christ, Irish dramatist George
Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) has observed, in that he
struggles against the old order, which requires an
eye for and eye. Christ preached against revenge.

Madness:
Pretended and Real

In his attempt to prove Claudius’s guilt, Hamlet
puts on an “antic disposition" (1.5.194)—that is, he
pretends to be mad. In so doing he is able to say
and do things that confuse and perplex others while
he conducts his murder investigation. But, in the
process, does he really become mentally unbalanced?
That is a question for debate. But there is no
question that he suffers deep mental anguish
characterized by indecision and depression.

Nor is there any doubt that Ophelia suffers a mental
breakdown. Like other young ladies of her time, she
has to accept the will of the men around her: her
father, her brother, the king, and of course Hamlet.
She is not allowed to have a mind of her own.
Consequently, she does not know what to do after
circumstances isolate her. Laertes goes off to
school, Hamlet rejects her, and then her father
dies. Meanwhile, the king centers his attention on
ridding Elsinore of Hamlet. It is Hamlet's rejection
of Ophelia and her father's death that are the
biggest blows to her sanity. Hamlet, disgusted with
his mother's marriage (making her, in his mind, a
wanton who yields her body to her late husband's
brother), seems to transfer his disgust to delicate
Ophelia, telling her, "Get thee to a nunnery: Why
wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?" (3.1.125).
Hamlet is saying that Ophelia is unworthy to marry
and bear children, who would be sinners. Instead,
she should enter a nunnery, a convent for nuns. Nunnery was
also used in Shakespeare's time as a slang term for
a brothel. So it could be that Hamlet is telling
Ophelia that she is no better than a common whore or
prostitute. Ophelia's presence in the play helps to
reveal Hamlet's thinking, in particular his
detestation of women as a result of his mother's
hasty marriage to vile Claudius.

Serpentine Satan

Imagery throughout the play dwells on Satan’s toxic
influence on Elsinore and its inhabitants.
Particularly striking are the snake metaphors. It is
the venom of a serpent (in the person of Claudius)
that kills old King Hamlet. Claudius, remember, had
poured poison into the king’s ear as reported by the
Ghost of the old king: While “sleeping in mine
orchard,” the Ghost says, “A serpent stung me”
(1.5.42-43). It is a sword—a steel snake, as it
were—that kills Polonius, Hamlet, Laertes, and
Claudius. (The sword that kills Hamlet and Laertes
is tipped with poison.) Moreover, it is a poisoned
drink that kills Gertrude. As for Ophelia, it is
poisoned words that undo her. The word poison and its
forms (such as poisons,
poisoner,
and poisoning)
occur thirteen times in the play. Serpent occurs
twice, venom
or envenom
six times, devil
nine times, and hell
or hellish
eleven times. Garden
(as a symbol for the Garden of Eden) or gardener occurs
three times. Adam
occurs twice.

Ambiguous Spirit World

In Shakespeare’s time, ghosts were thought by some
people to be devils masquerading as dead loved ones
and trying to win souls for Satan. It is
understandable, then, that Hamlet is reluctant at
first to believe that the Ghost on the roof of the
castle is really the spirit of his father. Hamlet
acknowledges his doubt:

The spirit that I
have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me. (2.2.433-438)

Empty Existence

Time and again, Hamlet bemoans the uselessness and
emptiness of life. He would kill himself if his
conscience would let him, as his “To be, or not to
be” soliloquy reveals. But as a Roman Catholic, he
cannot go against the tenets of his religion, which
forbids suicide.

How Old Is
Hamlet?

Early in the play, Shakespeare suggests that Hamlet
is in his teens or perhaps about twenty. But in the
churchyard in Act 5, the first gravedigger—holding
up the skull of the late King Hamlet’s jester,
Yorick, who was Hamlet’s childhood babysitter—says
that “this skull hath lain you i’ the earth
three-and-twenty years” (5.1.73). Hamlet’s age when
Yorick died was about seven. According to this
information, Hamlet should be about thirty. What’s
going on? Probably this: In an edition of the play
published in the early 1600s, the gravedigger says
Yorick has been dead for only twelve years, which
would make Hamlet about nineteen. Here is the line
spoken by the gravedigger in that edition: “Here’s a
scull [skull] hath bin here this dozen yeare
[year].” However, in the 1623 folio edition of the
play, Yorick has been dead for twenty-three years,
as stated by the gravedigger. Apparently, the
eleven-year discrepancy between the two editions was
the result of an editing error. What it all means is
that Hamlet is only nineteen or twenty.

The
Women in Hamlet: Shrinking Violets

Shakespeare’s plays are well populated with strong
women who lead or influence men. Examples are Portia
(The Merchant of
Venice), Cleopatra (Antony and Cleopatra),
Volumnia (Coriolanus),
Queen Elinor and Constance (King John), and Beatrice (Much Ado About Nothing).
However,
in Hamlet,
Gertrude and Ophelia are both weaklings who are
dominated by men.

In the second scene of the first act, Hamlet, deeply
disturbed that his mother (Gertrude) has married
Claudius a short time after the death of old King
Hamlet, says, “Frailty, thy name is woman!” (150).
Hamlet well realizes that fickle Gertrude wants,
needs, requires
marriage—impropriety notwithstanding—to satisfy her
desire for attention. As the new Mrs. Claudius, she
is totally submissive to the king's will; to offer
an original thought that might offend him is out of
the question. Ophelia also keeps her place. Like
Gertrude, she is totally dependent on a male—in her
case, her father. Even though she loves Hamlet, she
agrees to help her father spy on Hamlet. When
Laertes returns to Elsinore from France, she says,
“I would give you some violets, but they withered
all when my father died.” In other words, Ophelia
herself withered; her spirit died.

The
Meaning of "To be, or not to be"

Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” soliloquy (3.1.66) is
one of the most famous passages in English drama and
one of the most-often quoted. Its fame lies partly
in the attention it receives from the endless
debates it has generated about what it means. It is
currently fashionable to oppose the traditional view
that the passage is a deliberation in which Hamlet
is trying to decide whether to commit suicide.
Anti-suicide champions argue that Hamlet is really
deliberating what course of action to take—or not to
take—to ravel his sleeve of woe while retaining life
and limb.

Which view is right? Probably the traditional
view—that Hamlet is contemplating suicide with his
bare bodkin. However, because Shakespeare carried
ambiguity to the extreme in this passage instead of
speaking his mind plainly, there is plenty of room
to argue otherwise. Leading his readers through the
tangled dendrites in Hamlet’s brain, Shakespeare
bewilders his audience. Admittedly, though, it is
jolly good fun to try to solve the passage. In the
end, though, it appears that Hamlet is indeed
considering suicide in this passage.

Female Hamlet

About twenty centuries before the birth of
Shakespeare, the Greek playwright Sophocles (circa
497-406 BC) completed one of the finest plays in
history, Electra,
about a young woman from Greek myth who resembles
Hamlet in temperament and who struggles against
circumstances almost identical to Hamlet’s. Her
father, King Agamemnon, had been murdered by her
mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, who
succeeds to the throne. (Hamlet’s father, old King
Hamlet, was murdered by Claudius, who succeeds to
the throne and marries the late king’s wife—Hamlet’s
mother—Gertrude.) Like Hamlet, Electra seeks to
avenge her father’s death. But in plotting the deed
with her brother, Orestes, she suffers deep anguish,
like Hamlet, marked by bouts of melancholy. At times
Hamlet seems a carbon copy of Electra. There is no
evidence suggesting that Shakespeare used Sophocles
as a source for Hamlet,
but it would be no great surprise if a historical
document turned up suggesting that he did.

What's in a Name?

It is possible that the first syllable of Hamlet's
name derives from a German word, hamm, meaning
enclosed area. But his name could mimic the English
word hamlet, suggesting that Hamlet is a small world
unto himself. Claudius,
the name of King Hamlet's murderer, derives from the
Latin word claudus,
meaning lame. In one sense, Claudius is indeed lame.
His evil deeds hamstring him, making him incapable
of ruling Elsinore while Hamlet is on the prowl. Horatio,
the name of Hamlet's loyal friend, is of Latin
origin and may well refer to the Roman poet Quintus
Horatius Flaccus, known as Horace, whose major
themes include love and friendship. Fortinbras, the
level-headed Norwegian prince who arrives in
Elsinore at the end of the play to take command and
bring stability, may be so-named to suggest strength
of arm (Latin, fortis:
strong; French, bras:
arm). Gertrude, the name of Hamlet's mother, who is
Claudius's queen, means in old German spear (Ger-) and dear
(-trut).
Gertrude, of course, wounds Hamlet by marrying
Claudius (hence, Ger-)
but remains special to him as his mother (hence, -trut).

Allusion
to the War of the Theaters

Between 1599 and 1600, two companies of boy
actors—Paul’s Boys and the Children of the
Chapel—gained enthusiastic followings in London. In
fact, so popular did the boys become that they
attracted large numbers of theatergoers away from
adult acting companies. But the boy companies were
rivals not only of their adult counterparts but also
of each other. Ben Jonson 1572-1637), the chief
playwright for the Children of the Chapel, despised
the chief playwright for Paul’s Boys, John Marston
(1576-1634). They lambasted each other in allusions
in their plays, precipitating a “war of the
theaters.” In the second scene of the second act of
Hamlet, Shakespeare comments on the fascination with
the boy actors. The occasion is the arrival of a
company of adult actors (tragedians) at Elsinore to
stage an entertainment, actors whom Hamlet had
already seen in stage plays. When Hamlet asks
Rosencrantz whether these adult actors remain as
popular as ever, Rosencrantz says no. Here is the
dialogue:

HAMLET: Do
they [the arriving adult actors] hold the same
estimation they did when I was in the city? are
they so followed?
ROSENCRANTZ: No, indeed, are they not.
HAMLET: How comes it? do they grow rusty?
ROSENCRANTZ: Nay, their endeavour keeps in
the wonted pace: but there is, sir, an aery of
children, little eyases, that cry out on the top
of question, and are most tyrannically clapped
for't: these are now the fashion, and so berattle
the common stages—so they call them—that many
wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and
dare scarce come
thither.
HAMLET: What, are they children? who
maintains 'em? how are they escoted? Will they
pursue the quality no longer than they can sing?
will they not say afterwards, if they should grow
themselves to common players—as it is most like,
if their means are no better—their writers do them
wrong, to make them exclaim against their own
succession?
ROSENCRANTZ: 'Faith, there has been much to
do on both sides; and the nation holds it no sin
to tarre them to controversy: there was, for a
while, no money bid for argument, unless the poet
and the player went to cuffs in the question.
HAMLET: Is't possible?
GUILDENSTERN: O, there has been much
throwing about of brains.
HAMLET: Do the boys carry it away?
ROSENCRANTZ: Ay, that they do, my lord;
Hercules and his load too.

Why Hamlet
Is All of Us

English
essayist and literary critic William Hazlitt
(1778-1830) wrote that one reason for the appeal and
success of Hamlet is that audience members and
readers recognize themselves in the main character.
Hazlitt said:

Hamlet is a name:
his speeches and sayings but the idle coinage of
the poet's brain. What then, are they not real?
They are as real as our own thoughts. Their
reality is in the reader's mind. It is we who are
Hamlet. This play has a prophetic truth, which is
above that of history. Whoever has become
thoughtful and melancholy through his own mishaps
or those of others; whoever has borne about with
him the clouded brow of reflection, and thought
himself "too much i' th' sun;" whoever has seen
the golden lamp of day dimmed by envious mists
rising in his own breast, and could find in the
world before him only a dull blank with nothing
left remarkable in it; whoever has known "the
pangs of despised love, the insolence of office,
or the spurns which patient merit of the unworthy
takes;" he who has felt his mind sink within him,
and sadness cling to his heart like a malady, who
has had his hopes blighted and his youth staggered
by the apparitions of strange things; who cannot
be well at ease, while he sees evil hovering near
him like a spectre; whose powers of action have
been eaten up by thought, he to whom the universe
seems infinite, and himself nothing; whose
bitterness of soul makes him careless of
consequences, and who goes to play as his best
resource to shove off, to a second remove, the
evils of life by a mock-representation of
them—this is the true Hamlet. . . . [Hamlet) is
the one of Shakespear's plays that we think of
oftenest, because it abounds most in striking
reflections on human life, and because the
distresses of Hamlet are transferred, by the turn
of his mind, to the general account of humanity. (Characters of
Shakespeare's Plays. London: C. H.
Reynell, 1817)

Shakespeare
and the Booths

Edwin Booth, one of the nineteenth Century's
greatest Shakespearean actors, was the brother of
actor John Wilkes Booth, assassin of the sixteenth
U.S. president, Abraham Lincoln. The Booth brothers
were sons of Junius Brutus Booth, an actor born in
London. The latter's middle name was the same as
that of the most prominent assassin of Julius
Caesar. Ironically, Edwin and John Wilkes portrayed
Brutus and Mark Antony in a production of
Shakespeare's Julius
Caesar at the Winter Garten Theatre in New
York on November 25, 1864, the 300th anniversary of
the birth of Shakespeare. After John Wilkes Booth
assassinated Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, Edwin
Booth observed the following in a published letter:

The news of the
morning has made me wretched, indeed, not only
because I have received the unhappy tidings of the
suspicions of a brother's crime, but because a
good man and a most justly honored and patriotic
ruler has fallen in an hour of national joy by the
hand of an assassin. The memory of the thousands
who have fallen on the field in our common
country's defence during this struggle, cannot be
forgotten by me even in this the most distressing
day of my life. And I most sincerely pray that the
victories we have already won may stay the brand
of war and the tide of loyal blood.

While mourning in common with all other loyal
hearts, the death of the President, I am oppressed
by a private woe not to be expressed in words. But
whatever calamity may befall me or mine, my
country, one and indivisible, has been my warmest
devotion. EDWIN BOOTH. (quoted in The New York Times
on April 19, 1865, after the letter—addressed to
Henry C. Jarret, Esq., and dated April 15,
1865—was published in Boston newspapers)

Anaphora

Anaphora is the repetition of a word, phrase,
clause, or sentence at or near the beginning of word
groups occurring one after the other, as indicated
by the boldfaced words below.

’Tis not alone my
inky cloak, good mother, Nor
customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy
suspiration of forc’d breath,
No, nor
the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the
dejected haviour of the visage,
Together with all forms, modes, shows of grief,
That can denote me truly. (1.2.-81-86)

Doubt thou the
stars are fire; Doubt that
the sun doth move; Doubt
truth to be a liar;
But never doubt
I love. (2.2.125-128)

How these things
came about: so shall you hear Of carnal,
bloody, and unnatural acts, Of
accidental judgments, casual slaughters; Of deaths
put on by cunning and forc’d cause. (5.2.329-332)

Epithet

An epithet is a
miniature portrait that identifies a person or
thing by a prominent characteristic of that person
or thing. Often, an epithet follows a name to form
a title, as in Ivan the Terrible, Richard the
Lion-Hearted, or Alexander the Great.
(The underlined words are the epithets.) Sometimes
an epithet appears without a named person. The Great
Emancipator, for example, is an epithet
for Abraham Lincoln. The Brown Bomber is an epithet
for the great African-American boxer, Joe Louis.
Following is an epithet from Hamlet.

Hyperbole

Hyperbole is an exaggeration or overstatement, as
the following examples demonstrate.

By ’r lady, your
ladyship is nearer heaven than when I saw you
last, by the altitude of a chopine. (2.2.301)
[Hamlet tells one of the players that he is nearer
to heaven because of the thick-soled shoes
(chopines) that he wears. (Males played women's
parts in the plays of Shakespeare's time.)]

Would not this, sir,
and a forest of feathers, . . . get me a
fellowship in a cry of players, sir? (3.2.210)

[Hamlet speaks these
words to one of the actors, asking whether his
acting ability would get him a job as a player if
he wore plumes—as actors often did. The phrase forest of feathers
is a hyperbole.

Irony, Dramatic

Dramatic irony is a situation in a play or another
literary work in which the audience or the reader
grasps the irony or incongruity of the words or
attitude of a character when the character does not.
Here is an example:

Our late dear
brother’s death (1.2.21)
The king is speaking to Gertrude and other
characters. The audience is aware that Claudius,
who refers to the late King Hamlet as dear,
murdered the king. Gertrude is not aware of his
foul deed.

Metaphor

A metaphor is a comparison between unlike things. In
making the comparison, it does not use like, as, or than. Note the
following examples.

The
moist star
Upon whose influence Neptune’s empire stands
Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse.
(1.1.135-137)
[Comparison of the moon to a star and the oceans
to an empire. In Roman mythology, Neptune's empire
was the sea.]
[Comparison of the moon to a sick creature]

I
have heard,
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day. (1.1.169-172)
[Comparison of the rooster to a trumpet]

Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,
Whiles, like a puff’d and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads.
(1.3.52-55)
[Comparison of a lifestyle to a steep and thorny
trail and another lifestyle to a primrose path]

The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail.
(1.3.63)
[Comparison of the wind to a seated object;
comparison of the billowed canvas of a sail to a
shoulder]

The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.
(1.3.69-70)
[Comparison of the bonds of friendship to steel
hoops]

The
sepulchre,
Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn’d,
Hath op’d his ponderous and marble jaws,
To cast thee up again. (1.4.54-57)
[Comparison of the opening of a sepulchre to jaws]

Thou still hast been the father of good news.
(2.2.48)
[Comparison of good news to children of Polonius.

Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull
ass will not mend his pace with beating. (5.1.28)
[The first clown (gravedigger) compares the second
clown's brains to an ass that will not change
course when beaten.]

Metonymy

Metonymy (muh TAHN uh me) is the use of a word or
phrase to represent a thing, an entity, a group of
people, an institution, and so on. The church, for
example, may represent clergymen who make decisions
on moral issues. The
White House may represent the U.S.
president and his advisors. Here is an example from
Hamlet.

’Tis given out that,
sleeping in mine orchard,
A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of Denmark
Is by a forged process of my death
Rankly abus’d. (1.5.42-45)
[Whole ear
represents the populace of Denmark.]

Oxymoron

An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines
contradictory words, as in the following example.

[His words] are like
sanctified and pious
bawds. (1.3.138)
[A bawd is a prostitute. Therefore, pious and bawds are
contradictory words.]

Personificaton and Metaphor

Personification is a type of metaphor
that compares a place, a thing, or an idea to a
person, as in the following example.

Never
did the Cyclops’ hammers
fall
On Mars’s armour, forg’d for proof
eterne,
With less remorse than Pyrrhus’ bleeding sword
Now falls on Priam. (2.2.342-345)
[Personification and metaphor: comparison of a
sword to a person with little remorse; metaphor:
comparison of a sword to a bleeding creature]

Play on Words

A play on words, or pun, is the use of a word or
words that can be interpreted in more than one way.
The purpose is to achieve an ironic or a humorous
effect. Here is an example from Hamlet.

CLAUDIUS: How
is it that the clouds still hang on you?
HAMLET: Not so, my lord; I am too much i’
the sun. (1.2.69-70)
[Claudius asks why dark clouds still hang over
Hamlet—that is, why Hamlet continues to be
depressed. Hamlet replies that he remains in the
shadows because he is too much i' the sun. Here,
Hamlet is saying that he dislikes being regarded
as the son (sun) of Claudius.

Simile

A simile is a comparison between unlike things. In
making the comparison, it uses like, as, or than. Note the
following examples.

I could a tale
unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their
spheres. (1.5.21-23)
[Use of like
to compare Hamlet's eyes to stars]

Duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That rots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this. (1.5.39-41)
[The ghost uses than
to say Hamlet would be a motionless weed on the
banks of the Lethe—the river of forgetfulness in
Hades—if he did not desire to avenge the murder of
his father.

Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend.
(4.1.9)
[Use of as
to compare Hamlet's state of mind to contending
elements]

Essays

Why
Claudius, Not Hamlet, Became King of Denmark

Keen readers and audiences often ask why Claudius
acceded to the throne in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Should
not the crown have passed to the dead king’s son,
Prince Hamlet?

Not necessarily. In Denmark, the setting of the
play, an elective monarchy held sway until 1660,
when a hereditary monarchy replaced it. Therefore,
Shakespeare’s fictional Hamlet, based on a legendary
Dane of the Middle Ages, could not claim the crown
as a birthright.

In an elective monarchy, court officials—noblemen in
high standing—selected the new king by vote. The son
of a king was, to be sure, the prime candidate for
the royal chair, and usually he won it. But the
voting nobles had the right to reject him in favor
of another candidate. And that was precisely what
happened in fictional Elsinore. The nobles approved
the king’s brother, Claudius. In a hereditary
monarchy, the king’s oldest son automatically
ascended the throne when his father died. But
of course Danish laws do not explain why the nobles
chose Claudius over Hamlet. Shakespeare offers no
explanation of their vote. However, Hamlet refers to
the election of Claudius, saying, “He that hath
kill’d my king and whor’d my mother, / Popp’d in
between the election and my hopes” (5.2.71-72).
These lines appear in a passage in which
Hamlet—conversing with his best friend, Horatio—is
discussing Claudius’s murder plot against him and
his moral right to kill Claudius. The words “my
hopes” may signify that Hamlet expected to succeed
his father. In the same scene of the same act,
Hamlet—dying from the wound inflicted by Laertes’
poisoned-tip sword—again refers to the Denmark
election system when he says Fortinbras should be
the new king: “But I do prophesy the election lights
/ On Fortinbras: he has my dying voice”
(5.2.300-301).

That Hamlet did not gain accession after the murder
of his father could have been due to one or all of
the following reasons: (1) Claudius actively
campaigned for the kingship, winning votes by
promising political favors. (2) Gertrude, eager to
remarry and remain queen, campaigned on his behalf.
(3) The nobles perceived Hamlet as too young and
callow—and perhaps more likely to support the views
of the common people instead of their views—and thus
denied him succession.

In the tale on which Shakespeare based Hamlet—Amleth,
a Latin work by Saxo Grammaticus (1150?-1220?)—Feng
(the character after whom Shakespeare modeled
Claudius) murders his brother, King Horwendil, out
of jealousy. The opening paragraph of Amleth
explains the cause of the jealousy:

Horwendil, King of
Denmark, married Gurutha, the daughter of Rorik,
and she bore him a son, whom they named Amleth.
Horwendil's good fortune stung his brother Feng
with jealousy, so that the latter resolved
treacherously to waylay his brother, thus showing
that goodness is not safe even from those of a
man's own house. And behold when a chance came to
murder him, his bloody hand sated the deadly
passion of his soul.—(Eton, Oliver, trans. The Danish History
of Saxo Grammaticus. London: David Nutt,
1894.)

The Amleth tale also says Feng gained favor with the
nobles by telling lies: "Nor did his smooth words
fail in their intent; for at courts, where fools are
sometimes favored and backbiters preferred, a lie
lacks not credit" (Eton).

Denmark has had three monarchical systems since the
tenth century:

(1) Elective system.
In 940, Harald Bluetooth became the first king of
a unified Denmark under an elective system
requiring the monarch to sign a charter
guaranteeing a division of power between the king
and the people.
(2) Hereditary system and absolutism. In 1660,
Denmark adopted absolutism, granting the king full
power, under a hereditary system conferring the
right of succession on the oldest son. In 1665, a
royal edict affirmed the hereditary system under
the principle of primogeniture, a legal term
referring to the right of the oldest son to
inherit his father’s property.
(3) Constitutional monarch. In 1849, Denmark
abandoned its absolutist monarchy in favor of a
constitutional monarchy that invested government
power mainly in the people’s representatives while
retaining the king as a ceremonial figure. In
1953, Denmark granted women the right to accede to
the throne.

Hamlet,
Oedipus, and Freud

In an 1899 book entitled Die Traumdeutung (Interpretation of
Dreams) Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud
(1856-1939), the founder of psychoanalysis,
introduced the term Oedipus complex. This term
describes a psychological stage of development in
which a male child desires sexual relations with his
mother or a female child desires sexual relations
with her father. The child also exhibits hostility
toward the parent of the same sex. In normal
development, a child outgrows this desire. However,
in abnormal development, a child may retain his or
her sexual fixation on the parent of the opposite
sex.

After Freud coined the term Oedipus complex,
Shakespeare scholars noted that Hamlet exhibits the
symptoms of this condition in his relationship with
his mother, Gertrude, and stepfather-uncle,
Claudius. In a soliloquy in the second scene of Act
I, Hamlet condemns Claudius as a “satyr” (line 144)
and agonizes over his mother’s hasty marriage to
him, saying, “O! most wicked speed, to post / With
such dexterity to incestuous sheets!” (160-161).
Ample evidence exists elsewhere in the play to
support the Freudian interpretation of Hamlet’s
character while buttressing the view that Hamlet is
mentally deranged.

In coining his term, Freud drew upon the story of
Oedipus in Greek mythology. Here is the story, in
brief:

An oracle warns King Laius of Thebes that his
wife, Jocasta, will bear a son who will one day kill
him. After Jocasta gives birth to a boy, Laius acts
to defeat the prophecy. First, he drives a spike
through the child's feet, then takes him to Mount
Cithaeron and orders a shepherd to kill him. But the
shepherd, taking pity on the baby, spares him after
tying him to a tree. A peasant finds the baby and
gives him to a childless couple—Polybus (also
Polybius), the king of Corinth, and his wife,
Periboea (also Merope). They name the boy Oedipus
(meaning swelled
foot) and raise him to manhood.

One day, when Oedipus visits the oracle at Delphi,
the oracle tells Oedipus that a time will come when
he slays his father and marries his mother.
Horrified, Oedipus later strikes out from Corinth.
He does not want to live anywhere near his beloved
parents, Polybus and Periboea, lest a trick of fate
cause him to be the instrument of their demise. What
he does not know, of course, is that Polybus and
Periboea are not his biological parents.

On the road to Thebes, which leads away from
Corinth, Oedipus encounters his real father Laius,
whom he does not recognize, and several attendants.
Laius, of course, does not recognize Oedipus either.
Oedipus and Laius quarrel over a triviality—who has
the right of way. The quarrel leads to violence, and
Oedipus kills Laius and four of his attendants.

Outside Thebes, Oedipus encounters the Sphinx, a
winged lion with the head of a woman. The grotesque
creature has killed many Thebans because they could
not answer her riddle: What travels on four feet in
the morning, two at midday, and three in evening?
Consequently, the city lives in great terror. No one
can enter or leave the city. When Oedipus approaches
the Sphinx, the beast poses the riddle. Oedipus,
quick of mind, replies with the right answer: man.
Here is the explanation: As an infant in the morning
of life, a human being crawls on all fours; as an
adult in the midday of life, he walks upright on two
legs; as an old man in the evening of life, he walks
on three legs, including a cane.

Surprised and outraged, the Sphinx kills herself.
Jubilant, the people of Thebes then offer this
newcomer the throne. Oedipus accepts it and marries
its widowed queen, Jocasta. Jocasta is, of course,
the mother of Oedipus, although no one in Thebes
becomes aware of this fact until much later. Thus,
the oracle's prophecy to Laius and Oedipus is
fulfilled.

Hamlet, of course, does not marry his mother. But,
according to Freudian interpreters of the play, he
does desire her—at least subconsciously. What is
more, he solves a riddle of sorts, a homicide case,
and kills his father—that is, stepfather. However,
unlike Oedipus, Hamlet does not live on to anguish
over the past.

The
Feudal Age and the Castle

Feudalism

Many of Shakespeare plays, including Hamlet, are set
in the Feudal Age. This age of kings and castles was
born in Europe in the dawning shadows of the Dark
Ages. After the Roman Empire collapsed in the late
Fifth Century AD, its former territories in central
Europe had to fend for themselves. In time, without
the might of the imperial Roman sword to protect
them, these territories fell prey to Viking invaders
from the north and Muslim invaders from the south.

By the 730s, the Muslims had penetrated central
Europe through Spain. However, Charles Martel, the
ruler of the kingdom of the Franks in northeastern
Europe and southwestern Germany, repulsed the
Muslims with soldiers granted land in return for
military service as horsemen. (Horse soldiers, or
cavalry, had the speed and maneuverability to quell
the Muslim threat.) This arrangement—granting land
in exchange for service—was the founding principle
of feudalism.

The Franks continued to stand as a protective
bulwark under Martel's successors, Pepin the Short
and Charlemagne. But after Louis I the Pious assumed
power in 813, the Franks commenced fighting among
themselves over who should succeed to the throne.
This internal strife, along with Viking attacks,
resulted in the eventual breakup of the Frankish
kingdom. In 911, Viking marauders seeded themselves
in western France, in present-day Normandy, and took
root. By the late 900s, much of Europe (France,
England, western Germany, northern Spain, and
Sicily) had evolved into a land of local kingdoms in
which rulers took refuge behind the walls of castles
and leased land to people willing to protect and
maintain a kingdom against rival kingdoms or outside
invaders. The feudal system of offering land in
exchange for service then bloomed to full flower.

How Feudalism Worked

The king of a domain granted an expanse of land (fief) to
selected men of high standing in return for a pledge of allegiance
and military
service. These men, who came to be known as
great lords
(or grands
seigneurs) then awarded portions of their
land to lesser lords, or vassals, for a similar pledge of
loyalty, or fealty,
as well as dues and an agreement to fight the lord's
enemies. In return, the great lord met the everyday
needs of the vassals. Knights, highly trained mounted
warriors, were the backbone of the great lord's
army. Failure by a great lord or a vassal to live up
to a commitment, or warranty, was a felony, a crime
punishable by loss of the offender's title, land,
and other assets. In severe cases, the offender
sometimes lost his life or a limb.

The estate on which a lord lived was called a manor. Peasants, or serfs, were
attached to the land as property. They paid rents
and taxes, farmed the land, and performed many other
servile duties. Sometimes freemen also worked the
land. The lord exercised full political and social
control over his land.

The Castle

Most of the scenes in Hamlet are set in a castle. A castle
was a walled fortress of a king or lord. The word castle is
derived from the Latin castellum, meaning a fortified
place. Generally, a castle was situated on an eminence (a
piece of high ground) that had formed naturally or
was constructed by laborers. The high ground
constructed by laborers was called a motte (French
for mound); the motte may have been one hundred to
two hundred feet wide and forty to eighty feet high.
The area inside the castle wall was called the bailey.

Some castles had several walls, with smaller circles
within a larger circle or smaller squares within a
larger square. The outer wall of a castle was
usually topped with a battlement, a protective barrier
with spaced openings through which defenders could
shoot arrows at attackers. This wall sometimes was
surrounded by a water-filled ditch called a moat, a
defensive barrier to prevent the advance of
soldiers, horses, and war machines.

At the main entrance was a drawbridge,
which could be raised to prevent entry. Behind the
drawbridge was a portcullis
[port KUL ihs], or iron gate, which could be lowered
to further secure the castle. Within the castle was
a tower, or
keep, to
which castle residents could withdraw if an enemy
breached the portcullis and other defenses. Over the
entrance of many castles was a projecting gallery
with machicolations
[muh CHIK uh LAY shuns], openings in the floor
through which defenders could drop hot liquids or
stones on attackers. In the living quarters of a
castle, the king and his family dined in a great hall on an
elevated platform called a dais [DAY ihs],
and they slept in a chamber called a solar. The age
of castles ended after the development of gunpowder
and artillery fire enabled armies to breach thick
castle walls instead of climbing over them.

How
Shakespeare Prepared Manuscripts

Writing
Tool: Quill Dipped in Ink

A quill was the hollow, rigid shaft of a bird’s
feather. The word “pen” is derived from the Latin
name for “feather”—“penna.” Shakespeare and other
writers of his day used a variety of quills that
they dipped in an ink container (inkwell) on a stand
(standish) that held all the writing materials. If a
writer’s pocket lacked jingle, he invested in a
goose quill. If he could afford something better, he
invested in a swan quill. Writers or artists who
needed quills to produce fine lines purchased crow
quills. Quills from ducks, eagles, turkeys, hawks
and owls also served as “word processors,” producing
plays, poems, and sometimes revolution.

Quills were the writing instruments of choice
between AD 500 and AD 1850. (In the ancient world,
writers used a variety of other instruments to write
history, literature, announcements, bureaucratic
records, and so on. These instruments included
shaped twigs or branches that impressed words into
clay, mallet-driven chisels that etched words in
stone, brushes that wrote on pottery and other
smooth surfaces —such as plaster and animal
skins—sharpened bone or metal that inscribed words
on wax surfaces, and sharpened reed stems dipped in
ink that wrote on papyrus, an Egyptian water plant
that was dried and pressed to make thin sheets
suitable for receiving impressions. The introduction
of the quill in the 500s—an event recorded by St.
Isidore, a Spanish theologian—greatly eased the task
of writers, much as personal computers did when they
replaced typewriters in the last half of the
twentieth century.)

Lighting: Daylight, Candlelight, Oil Lamps

Shakespeare probably tried to do most of his writing
during the day, perhaps near a window, because
writing at night required lit candles or an oil
lamp. Candles were expensive. A writer could easily
spend a day's earnings or more on candlelight
illuminating the first draft of a poem or a
soliloquy in a play. The alternative—oil lamps—gave
off smoke and unpleasant odors. And they, too,
required a pretty penny to buy and fuel, and
maintain.

However, if Shakespeare attempted to confine all of
his writing to mornings and afternoons, he probably
failed. After all, as a playwright and an actor, he
had to appear for the daytime rehearsals and
performances of his works. Like people today, he had
a "nine-to-five job" that probably forced him to
moonlight. Also, passages in his plays suggest that
he could have been something of an insomniac
addicted to "burning the candle at both ends." In
his book Shakespeare:
the Biography (New York: Doubleday, 2005),
Peter Ackroyd speculates that as a result of his
various employments in the theatre, [Shakespeare]
was obliged to write at night; there are various
references in the plays to "oil-dried lamps," to
candles, and to "the smoakie light" that is "fed
with stinking Tallow" (Page 273).

Word
Choice and Spelling

No official English dictionaries existed in
Shakespeare's time. Therefore, he was free to use
spellings and meanings that did not agree with
accepted spellings and meanings. He could also
choose from among words imported from Italy, France,
and other countries by seafaring traders, soldiers,
tourists, and adventurers.

When words did not exist to express his thoughts,
Shakespeare made up his own—hundreds of them. Many
of his neologisms are now in common use around the
world. Jeffrey McQuain and Stanley Malless, authors
of Coined by
Shakespeare (Merriam-Webster, 1998), list
numerous words originated by Shakespeare, including
bedroom, eyeball,
generous, investment, madcap, obscene, radiance,
torture, unreal, and varied.

Hundreds of words used by Shakespeare have changed
meanings or connotations over time. For example, "Fellow, which
has friendly overtones for us, was insulting in
Shakespeare's day. Phrases that were metaphors to
him have often lost their coloring with us: Since we
seldom play the game of bowls, we overlook the
concrete implications of 'There's the rub' (an
impediment on the green)."—Levin, Harry. "General
Introduction." The
Riverside Shakespeare. G. Blakemore Evans,
textual ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, page 9.)

Sources and
Settings

To write his plays, Shakespeare borrowed from
history, Greek and Roman mythology, and literary
works, then used his genius to enliven histories and
myths and improve on plots, reworking them and
sometimes adding new characters.

Because settings on an Elizabethan stage were spare,
Shakespeare had to write descriptions of them into
his dialogue. This handicap proved to be a boon, for
it motivated Shakespeare to write some of his best
descriptions.

Whenever place or
time mattered [in a Shakespeare play], some
references to them could be introduced into the
dialogue, and if special atmospheric or dramatic
effects were needed, they could be created by the
poet's pen. Hence, it is to the Elizabethan stage
that we are indebted in great measure for the
exquisite descriptive poetry of Shakespeare. Such
conditions, moreover, encouraged a greater
imaginative cooperation on the part of the
audience in the production of a play, and this
active participation was further increased by the
informality of the platform stage. With such
intimacy, soliloquies, asides, and long set
speeches are natural and not absurd as they are in
modern theatre.—Watt, Homer A., and Karl J.
Holzknecht. Outlines
of Shakespeare's Plays. New York: Barnes,
1947 (page 8).

Drafts
of Plays and Censorship

Shakespeare's manuscripts had to be submitted for
approval. After writing out a manuscript,
Shakespeare (or a professional scribe) made a copy
of it in which obvious errors were corrected. An
acting company could alter a playwright's manuscript
with or without his approval. It is possible that
editors improved some of Shakespeare's manuscripts.
It is also possible that they weakened manuscripts.
The original manuscript was called the "foul papers"
because of the blots and crossouts on it. The new
version was called a "fair copy." It was submitted
to the Master of Revels, a government censor who
examined it for material offensive to the crown. If
approved, the fair copy became known as a "prompt
copy," which the actors used to memorize their
lines. The acting company bought the prompt copy,
gaining sole possession of it, after paying the
writer. The company then wrote in the stage
directions (exit, enter, etc.). John Russell Brown,
author of Shakespeare
and His Theatre (New York: Lothrop, Lee and
Shepard, 1982, page 31) discusses the circumstances
under which the censor forbade the staging of one of
Shakespeare's plays:

At a time of unrest,
when the Earl of Essex was challenging the Queen's
[Elizabeth's] authority and armed bands terrorized
the streets of London, the Chamberlain's Men
[Shakespeare's company] were forbidden to perform
Richard II, a play already licensed and performed,
because it contained a scene in which a king is
compelled to renounce his crown; in 1601, the
queen's counsellors believed that this might
encourage her enemies and spark off a revolution.
The theatre was taken very seriously by the
authorities and was allowed to deal with political
issues only if they did not refer too obviously to
current affairs or seditious ideas, but were set,
safely, in an earlier century or, better still, in
ancient Rome or foreign countries.

No original copy, or foul papers, of a Shakespeare
play has survived to the present day except for a
few pages of Sir
Thomas More, partly written by Shakespeare.
Fredson Bowers explains why the manuscripts were
lost:

No Shakespeare
manuscript is in existence. This is not
surprising: they were not collectors' items.
Printers would have thrown them away after setting
type from them; almost twenty years passed in the
Commonwealth with no public performances of plays,
and the manuscripts of the disbanded theatrical
companies were completely dispersed; the Great
Fire of London must have destroyed some. Indeed,
only a relative handful of the hundreds and
hundreds of Elizabethan plays have come down to us
in manuscript form, and it is our bad luck that so
few of these are by major dramatists. None is
Shakespeare's if we except the good possibility
that one scene in the manuscript of the unacted Sir Thomas More
is in his hand.—Bowers, Fredson. ''What
Shakespeare Wrote.'' Approaches to Shakespeare, by
Norma Rabkin. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964 (page
266).

Writing
Format:
Verse, Prose, and Poetry

Shakespeare wrote his plays partly in verse and
partly in prose, freely alternating between the two
in the same acts and scenes. It is not unusual, in
fact, for one character to address a second
character in verse while the second character
responds in prose. Sometimes, the same character
speaks in verse in one moment and in prose in
another.

Verse is a collection of lines that follow a
regular, rhythmic pattern. In Shakespeare, this
pattern is usually iambic pentameter, a rhythm
scheme in which each line has five pairs of
syllables. Each pair consists of an unstressed
syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Verse
resembles poetry. Prose, on the other hand, is the
everyday language of conversation, letters,
lectures, sermons, newspaper articles, book
chapters, and encyclopedia articles. Prose has no
rhyme or metric scheme.

Why did Shakespeare mix verse (including poetry) and
prose in his plays? That is a question that
inevitably occupies anyone studying Shakespeare’s
writing techniques. Before considering that
question, the Shakespeare analyst first needs to
learn how to identify the verse and prose passages
in a play. That task is easy. Here’s why:

In most modern editions of the plays, each line in
multi-line verse passages begins with a capital
letter, and each line in multi-line prose passages
begins with a small letter except the first line or
a line beginning with the opening word of a
sentence. In addition, verse passages have a
shortened right margin, but prose passages have a
full right margin. Following are examples of these
visual cues in verse and prose passages from Hamlet:

Verse Passage
Spoken by Hamlet

Look here, upon this picture, and on
this;
The counterfeit presentment of two
brothers.
See, what a grace was seated on this
brow;
Hyperion’s curls, the front of Jove
himself,
An eye like Mars, to threaten and
command,
A station like the herald
Mercury
New-lighted on a heaven-kissing
hill,
A combination and a form indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his
seal,
To give the world assurance of a man. (3.4.63-72)

Prose Passage Spoken by Hamlet

Alas! poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio; a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now,
how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge
rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have
kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes
now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of
merriment, that were wont to set the table on a
roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning?
quite chapfallen? Now get you to my lady’s
chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch
thick, to this favour she must come; make her
laugh at that. Prithee, Horatio, tell me one
thing. (5.1.80)

Now, then, what about single lines—those spoken in
conversation as questions or replies? They are in
prose if one line has no paired rhyming line or is
too abrupt to contain a rhythmic or rhyming pattern.
The following exchange between Macbeth and Lady
Macbeth contains such short lines.

HORATIO: Friends to
this ground.
MARCELLUS: And liegemen to the Dane.
FRANCISCO: Give you good-night.
MARCELLUS: O! farewell, honest
soldier:
Who hath reliev’d you?
FRANCISCO: Bernardo has my place.
Give you good-night. [Exit. [Exit is a stage
direction indicating that one character leaves the
stage—in this case, Marcellus.]
MARCELLUS: Holla! Bernardo!
BERNARDO: Say,
What! is Horatio there?
HORATIO: A piece of him.
BERNARDO: Welcome, Horatio; welcome, good
Marcellus.
MARCELLUS: What! has this thing appear’d again
to-night?
BERNARDO: I have seen nothing. (1.1.19-31)

But what of the multi-line passages? Why are some in
verse and others in prose? The answer some
Shakespeare commentators provide—an answer that is
simplistic and not wholly accurate—is that
Shakespeare reserved verse for noble, highborn
characters and prose for common, lowborn characters.
It is true that royalty and nobility often speak in
verse and that peasants and commoners often speak in
prose. But it is also true that noble characters
sometimes speak in prose and that lowborn
characters, like the witches in Macbeth, often
speak in verse. Why, then, does Shakespeare
alternate between verse and prose?

Shakespeare
used verse to do the following:

(1) Present a play with an elegant format that was a
tradition of the times. He also used verse to
express deep emotion requiring elevated language.
Because nobles and commoners were both capable of
experiencing profound emotion, both expressed their
emotions in verse from time to time.

(2) Make wise and penetrating observations or
reflect in soliloquies on one's response or reaction
to conditions and circumstances. For example, in the
following soliloquy, Hamlet reflects on his failure
to act decisively to gain revenge against Claudius.
He chastises himself for not being like those who
act without delay even on trivial matters.

How all occasions do
inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a
man,
If his chief good and market of his
time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no
more.
Sure he that made us with such large
discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us
not
That capability and god-like
reason
To fust in us unus’d. Now, whe’r it
be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven
scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the
event,
A thought, which, quarter’d, hath but one part
wisdom,
And ever three parts coward, I do not
know
Why yet I live to say ‘This thing’s to
do;’
Sith I have cause and will and strength and
means
To do ’t. Examples gross as earth exhort
me:
Witness this army of such mass and
charge
Led by a delicate and tender
prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition
puff’d
Makes mouths at the invisible
event,
Exposing what is mortal and
unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger
dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be
great
Is not to stir without great
argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a
straw
When honour’s at the stake. How stand I
then,
That have a father kill’d, a mother
stain’d,
Excitements of my reason and my
blood,
And let all sleep, while, to my shame, I
see
The imminent death of twenty thousand
men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of
fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a
plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the
cause,
Which is not tomb enough and
continent
To hide the slain? O! from this time
forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
(4.4.37-71)

(3) Present a poem within a play. Here is a poem
recited by Hamlet after Claudius, guilt-stricken by
the performance of The Mouse-Trap in the second scene
of the third act, stops the play and abruptly walks
out.

Why, let the
stricken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play;
For some must watch, while some must
sleep:
So runs the world away. (3.2.206-209)

And here is a poem sung by the First Clown (first
gravedigger) as he shovels dirt while Hamlet and
Horatio look on.

In youth, when I did
love, did love,
Methought it was very sweet,
To contract, O! the time, for-a my behove,
O! methought there was nothing meet.
(5.1.29)

(4) Suggest order and exactitude. A character who
speaks in precise rhythms and patterns is a
character with a tidy brain that plans ahead and
executes actions on schedule.

Shakespeare
used prose to do the following:

(1) Express ordinary, undistinguished observations
coming from the surface of the mind rather than its
active, ruminating interior.

(2) Make quick, one-line replies such as “Ay, my
lord” that are the stuff of day-to-day
conversations.

(3) Present auditory relief for audiences (or visual
relief for readers) from the intellectual and
connotative density of some verse passages.

(4) Suggest madness or senility, as in Shakespeare's
play King Lear.
Lear shifts from measured verse to rambling,
aimless, slapdash prose to reflect the deterioration
of his mind. Prose lacks the regular beat and meter
of verse passages.

(5) Depict the rambling, desultory path of
conversation from a tongue loosened by alcohol.

(6) Poke fun at characters who lack the wit to
versify their lines.

(7) Demonstrate that prose can have merits as a
literary medium. In Shakespeare’s day, verse (and
its elegant cousin, poetry) was the sine qua non of
successful writing. As an innovator, Shakespeare may
have wanted to tout the merits of prose. Thus, on
occasion, he infused his plays with prose passages
so graceful and thought-provoking that they equaled,
and sometimes even surpassed, the majesty of verse
or poetry passages. Such a prose passage is the
following, spoken in Hamlet by the title character:

What a piece of
work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite
in faculty! in form and moving how express and
admirable! in action how like an angel! in
apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights
not me: no, nor woman neither, though by your
smiling you seem to say so. (2.2.250)

Blank
Verse and Iambic Pentameter

Under Writing
Format:
Verse, Prose, and Poetry, you read that
Shakespeare wrote his plays in verse, prose, and
poetry and that he used a rhythm format called
iambic pentameter.
When his verse lines in iambic pentameter do not
rhyme, they are said to be in blank verse.

To understand iambic pentameter, you first need to
understand the term iamb. An iamb is a unit of
rhythm consisting of an unstressed syllable followed
by a stressed syllable. Consider the words annoy,
fulfill, pretend, regard, and serene. They are
all iambs because the first syllable of each word is
unstressed (or unaccented) and the second syllable
is stressed (or accented): an NOY, ful FILL, pre TEND, re GARD,
and ser ENE.
Iambs can also consist of one word with a single
unstressed (unaccented) syllable followed by another
word with a single stressed (accented) syllable
(example: the
KING). In addition, they may consist of a
final unstressed syllable of one word followed by an
initial stressed syllable of the next word. The
following lines from Hamlet demonstrate the use of
iambs. The stressed words or syllables are
boldfaced:

He took me by the wrist and held me hard,
Then goes
he to the
length of
all his arm,
And, with
his other
hand thus
o’er his brow,
He falls
to such
perusal of my face
(2.1.99-102)

When a line has five iambs, it is in iambic
pentameter. Each line in the passage above has five
iambs. For example, the iambs in the first line are
(1) He took,
(2) me by,
(3) the
wrist, (4) and held, (5) me hard.

The prefix pent-
(in pentameter)
means five. The suffix -meter refers to the recurrence of
a rhythmic unit (also called a foot). Thus, because
the above lines contain iambs, they are iambic.
Because they contain five iambs (five feet) they are
said to be in iambic pentameter. Finally, because
the words at the end of each line do not rhyme, the
lines are said to be in unrhymed iambic pentameter,
or blank verse.

Blank verse was modeled after ancient Greek and
Latin verse. It was first used in 1514 in
Renaissance Italy by Francesco Maria Molza. In 1539,
Italian Giovanni Rucellai was the first poet to
label the unrhymed iambic pentameter in his poetry
as blank verse (versi
sciolti in Italian). Henry Howard, the Earl
of Surrey, first used blank verse in English in his
translation of Vergil's epic Latin poem The Aeneid. The
first English drama in blank verse was Gorboduc,
staged in 1561, by Thomas Sackville and Thomas
Norton. It was about an early British king. Later in
the same century, Christopher Marlowe and William
Shakespeare turned blank verse into high art when
they used it in their plays. Marlowe used the verse
form in Doctor
Faustus, Tamburlaine,
and Edward II.
Shakespeare used it in all of his plays. In Germany,
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) popularized
blank verse in his long poem Nathan the Wise
(Nathan der Weise),
published in 1779.

Publication of a Play

The publishing industry in Shakespeare's England
operated under the control of the Worshipful Company
of Stationers, a trade organization which the
government established and supervised in order to
guard against the publication of subversive books or
books unduly critical of the government. If a play
met government standards—that is, if it did not
attempt to inflame the people against the crown—a
publisher could print and sell the play. Authors of
plays often had misgivings about committing their
work to print, as the following quotation points
out.

The plays of the
first professional companies [in Shakespeare's
day] were written mainly by actors themselves. . .
. The players were reluctant to allow their dramas
to be printed. They apparently thought that if a
play could be read, few people would wish to see
it acted. They may also have feared that their
plays, if printed, would be appropriated for
acting by rival companies. This reluctance
explains the fact that only eighteen of
Shakespeare's plays were printed during his
lifetime. They were published in small pamphlets
called quartos, which sold for only sixpence a
piece.—Alden, Raymond MacDonald. A Shakespeare
Handbook. Revised and enlarged by Oscar
James Campbell. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for
Libraries, 1970, page 74.

Study
Questions and Essay Topics

Hamlet
faces a moral dilemma. On the one hand,
the ghost of his father urges him to gain
revenge by killing Claudius. On the other
hand, Hamlet's conscience tells him that
killing is wrong. After all, he is a
college boy who has been exposed to the
teachings of theologians, philosophers,
and other thinkers who condemn revenge.
What was the attitude of people in
Hamlet's day—as many as a thousand years
ago—toward law and order and revenge?

Another
dilemma Hamlet faces is whether the ghost
is trustworthy. Is it really the ghost of
his father? Is it a demon? Is there really
a ghost at all? What was the attitude of
people in Shakespeare's time—he was born
in 1564 and died in 1616—toward the
supernatural: ghosts, witches, etc.?

In Act 1, Scene 2, Claudius
refers to Gertrude as "our sometime sister."
What does he mean by this phrase?

Does
Hamlet himself covet the throne? Why
didn't he—the son of old King
Hamlet—inherit the throne? (Look for a
clue in these lines: He that hath
kill'd my king and whored my mother, /
Popp'd in between the election and my
hopes (5.2.4). The play is full of
deceit. Who attempts to deceive
whom?

Before he leaves to study at
the University of Paris (Act 1, Scene 3),
Laertes warns his sister, Ophelia, to be
wary of Hamlet's attentions toward her,
saying Hamlet regards her as little more
than a "toy." Is it possible that Laertes is
right, that Hamlet really is not serious
about Ophelia?

Hamlet is
angry because his mother married Claudius
so soon after the death of old King
Hamlet. Was Gertrude having an affair with
Claudius before her husband's death? Was
she in on the murder?

Hamlet
puts on an "antic disposition"—that is, he
pretends to be insane. But is he, in fact,
insane or mentally unstable?

Does
Ophelia go insane? Does she commit suicide
or was her death an accident?

What
circumstances do Hamlet, Laertes, and
Fortinbras have in common? Do they share
similar character traits?

In
ancient and medieval times, ambitious men
often murdered their way to the throne, as
Claudius did in Hamlet.
Shakespeare was right on the mark in Henry
IV Part II when he wrote, "Uneasy
lies the head that wears the crown." In
other words, a ruler often had to sleep
with one eye open to watch for attempts on
his life. What were some of the methods
monarchs used to protect themselves or
uncover plots against them? For example,
did they employ spies or food tasters? Did
they stay in the company of trusted
guards?

Identify
metonymy
(a
figure
of speech) in the following excerpt from the play:
"O that . . . the Everlasting had not fix'd / His
canon 'gainst self-slaughter! What does
Shakespeare mean by canon and self-slaughter?